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Rising Star
Lots of places (really small, usually nobodies/local agencies) do this for cost reasons. It yields an incredibly bad creative product on average. The exception is when you have a creative or acc person who’s naturally wired to pinch hit as a strat. Then that person get burnt out and leaves because they realize they’re better than that nothing burger agency lol.
I am one of those dual-role strategy and account managers and once I found a small remote agency, with no micromanagement, a great boss who is also the agency owner, work/life balance, and creatives who are passionate about the client and work as I am, I’ve never been happier. Previously I worked at my client’s in-house agency and was told to “stay in my lane” when the creative was completely off-brief and I was a contractor with no plans for them to make anyone full-time. F that…
Rising Star
Your place needs better strategists.
Account and strategy are completely different things by skillset
I would value strategy over creative tbh.
You are romanticising roles instead of outcomes.
Account management, strategy and creative are different functions, yes. But marketing effectiveness does not care about job titles. It cares about impact.
Calling planners “spreadsheet calendar operators” misses the point entirely. The work of strategy is not logistics. It is deciding where investment produces disproportionate return, what behaviour actually changes outcomes, and what can be measured and scaled. That is not admin. That is leverage.
Creative does not “power” strategy. Rather it expresses it.
Without a clear commercial objective, audience prioritization, channel logic and measurement framework, creative is just content. Sometimes entertaining. Often expensive. Rarely repeatable.
PR, influencers and placements are not creative abandonment. They are creative deployment through channels that already have attention and trust built in. The idea that these tactics somehow operate without creative thinking is a strawman. They still require framing, narrative and execution. The difference is they are evaluated on contribution, not applause.
The fire department analogy fails because marketing is not a house fire. It is a resource allocation problem under uncertainty. You do not grab the loudest tool. You use the one that actually puts the fire out fastest with the least collateral damage.
And the human brain argument cuts both ways. Humans are also pattern-seeking, price-sensitive, cognitively overloaded and habit-driven. Distinctive assets and consistent presence outperform novelty far more often than creatives like to admit.
Creative absolutely matters. But it is not the engine. It is the interface.
Strategy decides whether the business grows. Creative decides how that growth shows up.
If forced to choose, I will choose the discipline that compounds, scales and survives leadership changes. That is strategy.
Creative earns its seat by proving it accelerates that system, not by asserting cultural superiority.
That is the difference between loving the work and being accountable for it.
They’re not all great. But I have worked with some great ones for sure.
A mediocre creative will certainly be replaced by AI - no difference … and same for mediocre strategists 💡
A great strategy team can go out and win you business all on their own. Same with a great account team.
I’ve heard stories of these star teammates, but they never seem to work at the agency at the same time as I do 😉
Rising Star
Also if you’ve never gotten any value from strategy then you’re probably (a) not making large/complex projects or (b) cranking out assets vs conceptual work.
Or OP has only worked at places that are terrible at strategy. I spent a long time at an agency that was good at writing briefs, the strategists were typically helpful and many were super important to the client relationships - knowing how to help sell work, understand their problems, speak their jargon etc. The place I am now, it’s been literally years since I’ve met a good strategist - a few are mediocre but the vast majority are terrible and it seems to be a problem with every agency in the entire holdco.
I completely disagree. I’ve worked with world class strategists that pull their weight and give extremely valuable insights and points of view. I can understand this take at like a local level mom and pop shops maybe, but not for large global or national brands.
As a strategist who has been used as a "security blanket" for account teams.... Let's just say I'd love to see you try.
Get em
Rising Star
That makes about as much sense as combining the responsibilities of art and copy
Yeah, we’ve seen the types of agencies that are built around account teams. They’re why garbage advertising happens.
lol. That’s like saying art directors should just be copywriters as well. We don’t really need copywriters as art directors can produce the work from start to finish.
Pro
Actually on the contrary I somewhat agree Strat1. I could get to a (shitty) end product because I own a ChatGPT subscription and the means to produce artwork
Cutting all strategists only dumps more work on you in the long run. You may feel as if you don't benefit from having them around, but I've personally seen the negative impact of a creative team not having a strategist.
Sounds like you need better strategists, better projects, or a better process, but going after an entire discipline is a pretty bold move.
Yeah, we’ve seen the types of agencies that are built around account teams. They’re why garbage advertising happens.
The truth is that most of us fall in the middle of the curve in terms of skill. Working together is how we produce something stronger, both strategically and creatively, than we could on our own.
If you want to burn off trust and good faith between teams, have at it. But I promise you, your strategic partners notice your resentment and typically sit much closer to the client than you do.
I’m amazed by our creative teams’ thinking and love hearing their strategic thoughts. But I have also worked with creatives where I could feel the disdain on every call. It didn’t make me want to bring them in on opportunities.
Multiply this attitude to an entire industry and what are we left with? Creative teams who think they don’t need to listen to strategy and strategists looking for ways to cut out traditional creative teams. The agency model does not work if we treat it as “every discipline for themselves.”
Aside from the fact they are two different jobs, this would also reduce what agencies can charge. They want to make money and the more billable bodies the better
It’s generally less about what you want, and more about what the clients want. And there’s a decent chance they tell the people who run your agency that the work, recos and go to market, isn’t strategic enough.
^ Kinda disagree … the future is data, both business and audience. Understanding human behavior / psyche powered by data supplemented by audience data is where strategy should be focused. Knowing the clients’ business is an imperative and people as humans and consumers.
Now I’m old school and run circles around most in the industry now who lack proper training in psychology, anthropology and data and analytics. Many of today’s generation of strategist and creatives are a bit subpar - lack of conceptual thinking, very tactical so yeah Google or AI can replace that. New gen should be worried….
You say the truth my friend. It's hard to swallow for many 'professionals' who use talking as their means of selling.
This is a classic scenario of a salesman who can talk to sell. Then there's the manufacturer, the workers, the laborers who make the actual product to sell.
Yet the salesperson thinks they did it all. And without them nothing can happen. You know who I'm talking about...